No wonder child protection in Haringay is such a mess when this kind of gobbledigook passes for English

[mabanana]

From the Guardian:
A conference in January will focus on improving child protection.
Sharon Shoesmith will be a key speaker. Her topic: 'Breaking Down Silos: Inspiring Ownership and Sharing Responsibility For Measuring Impacts and Outcomes Across Partnerships.'

Now, wtf is that supposed to mean? It actually makes me quite angry that this kind of doublespeak is being used. It cannot help people think clearly about what must be done. It is the kind of language that makes it OK to sack and legally silence whistleblowers who want to say, in plain English, something is wrong here and we are failing children.

Like you I think it is dangerous to talk in such an obscure and meaningless way. It has to distance people from what they are actually discussing. To be honest, and I'm an intelligent, informed person with a degree in English, I have no idea at all what that title means. And it's not as if we are discussing complext technology with its own vocabulary - this is about protecting children from harm.

I understand what she means and presumably I'm the kind of professional she is speaking to. If I went to a conference entilted "SEAL: Implementation in your school" I wouldn't demand the speaker be sacked because I didn't know what SEAL was.

Fucking witch hunt.

Oh come on, that title is bollocks. There is no excuse for it. I suspect that Haringay management doesn't much like plain speaking, hence the true witchhunt of those who tried to point out the kind of failings that led directly to the death of this baby.

What we witness is quite the opposite of a witch hunt, actually, as the public is told that it was nobody's fault.

OK, what does 'Inspiring ownership' mean? What are 'silos'?

I get what the conference is about. but then i work9ed0 within this field so i would hope i should!

To be fair it's not the kind of thing they are going to hold at the o2 and sell tickets on ebay for. its a conference for a specific group of proffessionals. those who should understand it.

So what does it mean, and what would be wrong with using plain English?

then just hide it TSD why post about hiding it

and I agree with OP. Language is very important, words used in this way do create a chasm between, well the reality and immediacy of situations.

It's not bollocks if you have an understanding of the Every Child Matters agenda and particularly the five outcomes. I presume she was speaking to an audience of mixed professionals working across the children's trust.

If you want to go a bit X files, you're welcome, but this is a bit of an odd think to inspire 'leafy knoll' thinking!

So what does it mean? What are 'silos' what does 'Inspiring ownership' mean in this context?

Plain English in a case like this would be considered too emotive. They are sensitive about blame, so they want to back-off and distanciate from the "horror" of what has happened. They will be sitting in a large conference room with paper and pencils and no one will want to hear certain words, hence stirring up emotions. (Which I think is utterly wrong btw)

"Plain" English

OMG I hate this stuff. "Silos" are organisations/officies where they just get stuff done without endless liaising and reference to other departments. "Silo thinking" is independent thought where you focus on your own department and its job. These are BAAAAAD because what you should be doing is constantly comparing notes with other departments and "sharing best practice" and having meetings.

Up to a point I think communication is important of course - departments should be able to update each other on a particular case and share files. But this gets taken so far that it's a complete waste of time. My friend who is a civil servant is always telling me about this stuff. She seems to spend, literally, 90% of her work time not actually getting stuff done that relates to the task in hand, but at meetings/filling in forms/going on courses about how to do the job, improve best practice blah de blah. It infuriates me that so much public service is run this way and people actually seem to get highly paid jobs just siting around inventing more and more bureaucracy. It's so, SO stupid and wasteful.

As a freelancer I sit in an office at home by myself and take commissions and churn out work. I spend about 5% of my time on admin. I'm efficient and proud to be a "silo" and I think people responsible for this mad trend should sit up and realise that this attitude results in very little getting done, at huge cost.

well by silo she means the common used phrase to describe a team that doesn't seem to work well together, yet are working fine as individuals.

so bearing in mind the lamming report and its directives i assume she is intending to spea to a group of professionals about the difficult job of multi agency managment...probably in relation to child protection.

Inspiring ownership - stop passing the buck

sharing responsibility - "it wasn't me it was the GP" type stuff.

measuring impacts and outcomes - seeing the difference it makes

across partnerships - between the varying agencies that work together in such cases.

Now that is about as layman as i can get it without sounding patronising.

But tbh i dont really undferstand WHY you feel you should understand what its about. I wouldn't see a listing for some medical or surgical conference and demand to know that all the consultants be sacked because i didn't understand what the technical term for a bowel blockage was.

Every Child Matters is a lovely idea in theory - and of course you can have lots of back slapping conferences about it - but I don't see much change going on in the real world unfortunately.

I personally believe that SS is is crisis across the country. God knows what to do about it. Frighteningly Haringay's children's services had 3 stars (I think I read that this week). Ours has one- had none a couple of years ago (and yes some children have been killed on their watch- and my experience of them is that they're pretty hopeless an unable to effect any change).

and i would imagine this conferrence was planned way in advance of any news articles thsi week.

"She seems to spend, literally, 90% of her work time not actually getting stuff done that relates to the task in hand, but at meetings/filling in forms/going on courses about how to do the job, improve best practice blah de blah."

From the outside looking in, this (imho) seems to be the problem with SS.

You're a star, Mamazon for being so patient! I think we have an example here of an initial impression remaining despite evidence to the contrary and the power of 'groupthink'.

Exactly jimjams. People get congratulated and rewarded for having the best appearance of having stuff going on - conferences and initiatives and training. Not for actually being good at what they are supposed to be doing.

My friend puts vast amounts of effort into presentations etc that are aimed at getting the department good ratings and making them look good compared to other departments - NOT at actually doing their job. One of these presentations involved her boss going to the UN in new york, at public cost, just to blabber on about what their dept are doing and how they've come up with this initiative and that initiative. When she was preparing it I pointed out that one of the things they were talking about was actually untrue (it related to the risk of various kinds of crime in scotland and wasn't accurate) and she brushed it off saying "oh but the UN won't know that and it sounds good". In other words, fuck reality, fuck actually changing anything - as long as you do your presentations and conferences and get your ratings.

but the alternative to that Snowleapard/JJ is that they/we all work as individuals and no one lets anyone else know what information they have.

that was what was blamed for the death of a beautifull little girl called Victoria some 8 years ago.

As for the constant training days..would you rather the decisions made abotu whether a child stays with an abusive parent or not is made by someone who left college 15 years ago and has no refresher training?

mamazon, I think I should know what they are talking about because this ISN'T a conference about medical or technical matters where there will be complex terminology that has no translation. It's about child protection. And if something can be put in plain English with no loss of meaning then we should use plain English. And I believe strongly that language is important, that unclear, needlessly complicated language can make it harder, not easier to communicate. It can even make it harder to think. George Orwell is good on this subject. I would suggest that if Shoesmith actually translated this awful jargon into English, it might help her understand what she is trying to say. The fact that even now I am finding it hard to get a grip on what she is really supposed to be speaking about is evidence that this sort of language doesn't help.
So this is really. How to get people to share information about ??? in order to achieve ???

how about -

get your team working together - getting them to take respinsibility for their caseload whilst also offering the info to other agencies as and when needed, plus we'll be discussing what happens with other agencies when this works well and when it doesn't.

Actually that took a lot of thinking about.
her version really does make much more sense to me.

Do youwork within a CPT mabanana? do you feel you should be attending this conference? do you feel that you should be "in" on the terminology used by middle to upper managment of a social services/cp department?